Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

When finally she got to the top step, Farish was scarlet in the face, shaking all over like a machine about to blow. Gently, gently, she cringed up to Farish and patted him on the sleeve.

“Is it really that important?” she asked, in a kindly tone that somehow suggested yes, it was very important indeed.

“Hell yes!” roared Farish. “I won’t be spied on! I won’t be stole from! I won’t be lied to—no, no,” he said, jerking his head in response to her light little papery claw upon his arm.

“Oh, my. Gum’s so sorry y'all boys can’t get along.” But it was Danny she was looking at as she said it.

“Don’t feel sorry for me!” screamed Farish. Dramatically, he stepped in front of Gum, as if Danny might rush in and kill them both. “ He’s the one you need to feel sorry for!”

“I don’t feel sorry for either one of ye.” She’d edged past Farish and was creeping into the open door of Danny’s trailer.

“Gum, please,” Danny said hopelessly, stepping up as far as he dared, craning to watch the pink of her faded housedress as it vanished into the dim. “Gum, please don’t go in there.”

“Good night,” he heard her say, faintly. “Let me make up this bed….”

“Don’t you be worrying over that!” cried Farish, glaring at Danny as if it was all his fault.

Danny darted past Farish and into the trailer. “Gum, don’t,” he said in anguish, “ please .” Nothing was more certain to launch Farish into an ass-kicking rage than Gum taking it into her head to “clean up” after Danny or Gene, not that either one of them wanted her to. One day years ago (and Danny would never forget it, never) he had walked in to find her methodically spraying his pillow and bedclothes with Raid insecticide….

“Lord, these curtains is filthy,” said Gum, shuffling into Danny’s bedroom.

A long shadow slanted in from the threshold. “I’m the one thatas talking to you,” said Farish in a low, frightening voice. “You get your ass out here and listen .” Abruptly he snatched Danny by the back of the shirt and slung him back down the stairs, down into the packed dust and litter of the yard (broken lawn chairs, empty cans of beer and soda pop and WD-40 and a whole battlefield of screws and transistors and cogs and dismantled gears) and—before Danny could rise to his feet—he jumped down and kicked him viciously in the ribs.

“So where do you go to when you go driving off by yourself?” he screamed. “Huh? Huh?”

Danny’s heart sank. Had he talked in his sleep?

“You said you went to mail Gum’s bills. But you ain’t mailed them. There they sat on the seat of the car for two days after you come back from wherever, mud splashed on your tires a foot deep, you ain’t got that driving down Main Street to the post office, did you?”

Again he kicked Danny. Danny rolled over on his side in a ball, clutching his knees.

“Is Catfish in on this with you?”

Danny shook his head. He tasted blood in his mouth.

“Because I will. I’ll kill that nigger. I’m on kill the both of you.” Farish opened the passenger door of the Trans Am and slung Danny in by the scruff of his neck.

“You drive,” he shouted.

Danny—wondering how he was supposed to drive from the wrong side of the car—reached up to feel his bloody nose. Thank God, I’m not wired , he thought, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, split lip and all, thank God I’m not wired or I’d lose my mind ….

“Go?” said Curtis brightly, toddling up to the open window; with his smeary orange lips, he made a vroom vroom noise. Then, stricken, he noticed the blood on Danny’s face.

“No, sugar,” said Danny, “you’re not going anywhere,” but all at once, Curtis’s face slackened, and—gasping for breath—he turned and scurried off just as Farish opened the door on the driver’s side: click . A whistle. “In,” he said; and before Danny realized what was happening Farish’s two German shepherds leapt into the back seat. The one named Van Zant panted noisily into his ear; its breath was hot, and smelled like rotten meat.

Danny’s stomach contracted. This was a bad sign. The dogs were trained to attack. On one occasion, the bitch had dug out of her pen and bit Curtis on the leg through his blue jeans so bad he had to get stitched-up at the hospital.

“Farish, please ,” he said, as Farish popped the seat back in place and sat down behind the wheel.

“Shut your mouth.” Farish stared straight ahead, his eyes queerly dead. “The dogs are coming.”

Danny made a big show of feeling around in his pocket. “If I’m on drive, I need to get my wallet.” Actually, what he needed was a weapon of some sort, if only a knife.

The interior of the car was blazing hot. Danny swallowed. “Farish?” he said. “If I’m on drive, I need my license. I’ll just go inside now and get it.”

Farish leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes and stayed like that for a moment—very still, eyelids fluttering, as if trying to fight off an impending heart attack. Then, very suddenly, he started up and roared, in full throat: “ Eugene !”

“Hey,” said Danny, over the piercing barks from the back seat, “no need in calling him out here, let me get it myself, okay?”

He reached for the door handle. “Ho, I seen that!” shouted Farish.

“Farish—”

“I seen that, too!” Farish’s hand had shot to the top of his boot. Has he got a knife in there ? thought Danny. Great .

Half breathless from the heat, throbbing all over with pain, he sat still for a moment, thinking. How best to proceed, so Farish wouldn’t jump on him again?

“I can’t drive from this side,” he said at last. “I’ll go in and get my wallet, and then we can trade places.”

Attentively, Danny watched his brother. But Farish’s thoughts had strayed elsewhere for the moment. He had turned around to face the back seat, and was allowing the German shepherds to lick him all over the face.

“These dogs,” he said, threateningly, lifting his chin over their frantic attentions, “these dogs mean more to me than any human being ever born . I care more about these two dogs here than any human life that was ever lived .”

Danny waited. Farish kissed and fondled the dogs, murmuring to them in indistinct baby-talk. After a moment or two (the UPS coveralls were ugly enough, but one thing Danny could say for them: they made it hard if not impossible for Farish to conceal a gun on his person) he eased the door open and got out of the Trans Am and started across the yard.

The door of Gum’s trailer squeaked open with a rubbery, refrigerator sound. Eugene poked his head out. “Tell him I don’t care to be spoke to in that tone.”

From the car, the horn blared, throwing the Shepherd dogs into a fresh fit of barking. Eugene pulled his glasses low on his nose and peered over Danny’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t let those animals ride in the car if I was you,” he said.

Farish threw back his head and bellowed: “Get back out here! Now ! “

Eugene took a deep breath, rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. Scarcely moving his lips, he said: “If he don’t end up in Whitfield again he’s gone kill somebody. He come in there this morning and like to set me on fire.”

“What?”

“You was asleep,” said Eugene, looking apprehensively over Danny’s shoulder at the Trans Am; whatever was going on with Farish and the car, it was making him plenty nervous. “He taken his lighter out and said he’d burn the rest of my face off. Don’t get in the car with him. Not with them dogs. Ain't no telling what he’ll do.”